11th July 2014. We’ve been two years on the road – 104 weeks, or 730 days – where has it gone?!!

Celebrating two years on the road with a ‘cake’ in the Barbie Cafe and a supper at Flavours restaurant, Taipei

And now we’re embarking on Year 3 …. But only for a month, then we’ll be home, which we all have mixed feelings about! Can’t wait to see all our friends and family, enjoy some home comforts and we’re pretty happy about enjoying (hopefully) a pleasant British summertime. More

On our family gap year travels, one of the most exciting places we’ve been to is the Falklands.

Images of the Falklands – a running-backwards-race at the racetrack fun day which we joined in but didn’t win, king penguins at, Volunteer Point, Port Stanley houses decorated with Union Jacks and Falklands flags, landmine warnings at Surf Bay and fishing at the lake beneath Mount Tumbledown

It’s partly because it’s just so British! More British than being at home. Of course everyone speaks English, which was a real treat after speaking Spanish or Portuguese for our whole trip so far, it was exciting too because we got to stay in a lovely traditional B&B called Kay’s and she was amazing! It was really interesting to find out what a small island in the middle of the south Atlantic was like where there were only a few people but where they’d had a war in 1982 when Argentina invaded and tried to take the islands over. And it was also exciting because its close to Antarctica and we got to see king penguins and rockhopper penguins and that was really unbelievable!

Iguazu Falls – just a fraction of the Falls which includes 275 individual cascades amidst multiple islands.

Iguassu (or Iguazu, or Iguacu Falls) is so incredible it deserves its 3 spellings, or more, if you include versions with or without accents. Then there’s Puerto Iguazu in Argentina and Foz do Iguacu just across the border in Brazil, the towns and airports in the midst of the rainforest, stopping off points for the Falls.

Everything you read about the Uyuni Salt Flats in the high Altiplano of Bolivia makes you desperate to see it but a little fearful that it maybe can’t live up to its reputation.

We’d hoped for a three day trip which would take us across the salt flats into Chile but tour companies weren’t running them due to the rains. The one day trip is said by some to make for a very second rate experience to the three day expedition!

The kids on the jeep – Salar de Uyuni

Zoe wakes in our Salt hotel feeling really breathless and has some oxygen More

11th April 2013. Nine months today since our family of five touched down in Rio de Janeiro on a BA flight from Heathrow, London to begin our Family Gap Year travelling around the world.

Our journey so far…

We’ve almost done a (kind of squashed) figure of 8 around the continent, flown or boated to islands in the Pacific and Atlantic and are now in Santiago, enjoying our last days before flying to Easter Island (part of Chile) and then on to Tahiti in French Polynesia.

Like this:

I was late for lunch yesterday after a long session in front of the computer. I grabbed a taxi (you have to love the $1 to anywhere in town) and dashed down to the Malecon for lunch to be met by a very excited Zoe who dragged me to the beach, “Dad, boobies, you have to come and see the boobies! Boobies!”. More

The children at Woodridge school have followed our journey and sent us some questions! They asked me to tell them about more amazing animals & insects I’ve seen, after they enjoyed my posts about hairy caterpillars and piranhas.

We’ve travelled through the Amazon rainforest from Belem in Brazil on the Atlantic Ocean, through Columbia and Peru into Ecuador by river.

Our journey through the Amazon Rainforest on the Amazon and Coca Rivers

It’s been an amazing journey – hot, fun, tiring, lots of bugs, lots and lots of water, lots and lots of trees and getting sick!

The Amazon rainforest has more insects, birds and animal species than anywhere else in the world but when you travel there, what you expect to see and what you actually see can turn out a bit differently!

Its our third day in the jungle. Sami has inspected Lara’s foot which is looking a lot better and he says he’ll treat it with jungle medicine. He collects a large seed bobbing in the water which he opens and scrapes the green, wet, highly pungent centre onto her foot. He says this ‘Fava’ (we later discover means ‘bean’) will kill any worm in her foot!!

Jungle Medicine

Sami puts the ‘Fava’ on Lara’s foot

We head off after breakfast and all of us feel just too hot!! The kids moan and no one is too bothered to concentrate on spotting monkey or sloths! More